


You're Shying Away

by turps



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 18:48:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6126607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turps/pseuds/turps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard gets lost in his art.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Shying Away

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the picfor1000 challenge on livejournal.
> 
> The challenge is to write a story of exactly 1000 words based on a picture prompt. My prompt is [here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sabrinas365project/13734289593/in/photostream/).
> 
> As always, thanks to themoononastick for looking this over.

It started slowly at first.

Hours when Gerard didn’t look up from his work. Then days, the sun rising and setting as Gerard remained lost in his own painted world, where selecting the right brush and colour meant more than remembering to wash or attempting to eat.

It was just easier that way. With a brush in his hand -- a pencil _anything_ that allowed him to create -- Gerard could push back his thoughts, erase them with the medium of paint, pencil or pen, anxiety replaced by a world created on canvas. 

A brushstroke, a swipe of his hand, Gerard would drink cold coffee and ignore the reality around him. He’d emerge hours later, blinking and unsteady on his feet as he stepped from one world back to another, confused when he finally saw all the missed calls, the unread texts that scrolled ever down.

But it was okay then. Gerard would call Mikey, would explain getting lost in his art and always, Mikey would get it. It’s just what Gerard did -- what he does -- and the conversation would remain easy, explanations given and things moving on, Gerard startled to find himself smiling as Mikey described his own day. 

Then things changed.

Little by little Gerard found it harder to come back. What use was reality when he could create his own world? Where you didn’t have to deal with the emotions that always clung close, dark and suffocating and always too much.

So one time Gerard didn’t come back.

Exhausted, Gerard slumped to the floor, back to the wall and canvas propped on his lap. Eyes wide and thoughts frantic, he kept painting, even when his hand cramped and his brush fell -- but that was okay, because Gerard could create using his fingers, paint warm against his skin as he smeared and mixed.

And it was so nearly perfect. If only Gerard could only convey those last tiny details, the things that were so clear in his head -- but somehow he couldn’t. No matter how much the painted world called him, crying out for Gerard to finish his work.

Frustrated Gerard pushed his hand flat against the canvas, head bowed and tears sliding down his cheeks, unable to stop himself falling.

Forward.

Ever forward. One world blurring as he merged with the next.

~*~*~

_I’ve seen him again_.

Fingers flying, Mikey eyes the sketch artist as he sends the text, pushing his phone back into his pocket before he has to see the reply. Not that he needs to, he already knows what it says.

_It can’t be him. It’s not possible._

But it is.

It’s been almost a year and Mikey’s heart is still broken. Every moment he misses Gerard, but Mikey knows where he is.

No note, no text or messages and an apartment left dirty and abandoned. All Gerard’s clothes strewn on the floor and his bed unmade, and everywhere, spilled paint, hardened brushes and torn paper.

Mikey shivers, remembering Gerard’s last work, the canvas left on the floor, a painted handprint smeared over a darkened landscape and billowing fog. Mikey hates that painting, but somehow, when he cleared Gerard’s apartment, Mikey couldn’t throw it away.

Something about it compels him, pulling Mikey forward as he sits night after night looking at details. The tiny house that’s almost obliterated under a slash of red paint, two figures running away from something huge and horrific.

Mikey hates the confusion, the bleakness, the fear he feels as he looks and knows he seeing Gerard’s deepest thoughts caught on a canvas.

_Mikey_.

Head jerking up, Mikey looks to the side, and instantly sees Gerard. Not in person, but trapped in the sketch, lines sharp and eyes wide as he screams Mikey’s name.

Breath hitching Mikey crosses the road, needing space, to get away from the sketch artist who’s looking his way. It helps that the sketched Gerard has faded, his lines blurring away.

Gerard will come back. Mikey knows that, he’s been seeing him for months now, faded at first but all the time getting stronger. He’s seen Gerard in paintings, in sketches, on a napkin left behind in a diner, the waitress crumpling it up, unable to see Gerard staring out at the world.

Mikey’s seen Gerard appear painted, with dark pencilled lines. He’s flickered and faded out of the pictures at times -- but always he comes back.

And that’s great. That’s good. But it isn’t enough.

Mikey needs his big brother, and no matter what his family and friends are saying, Gerard isn’t gone. He isn’t dead. He’s just stuck in the paintings, and somehow Mikey’s going to find him.

~*~*~

“Mikey. No!”

Gerard screams Mikey’s name, pressing against the invisible wall between this world and the next.

Hands clenched into fists, Gerard hammers against that wall and keeps shouting, needing Mikey to hear.

“No. Don’t. You don’t want to be here.”

Mikey doesn’t listen, Gerard knew that he wouldn’t, and he hates himself yet again for ever needing to look. If he’d remained back in the shadows this wouldn’t have happened, but Gerard couldn’t resist. He needed to know Mikey was okay, and Gerard would spend hours looking out of the painting -- then, as he learned to travel, paintings, any kind of sketch -- longing to return to the real world, but most of all, longing to go back to Mikey.

“Mikey. No.”

Gerard’s voice trails off, his throat sore as all around the fog twists and tumbles, spindly fingers reaching out, cold against Gerard’s skin as Mikey moves closer, his hand close to the canvas.

“Gerard,” Mikey says, “Gerard, I’m coming to get you.”

Gerard wants to say no, that Mikey needs to step back, but the barrier between them is fading, Gerard unable to resist reaching out, needing to touch Mikey even as he hates that Mikey’s about to be caught in this nightmare.

“Gerard?” Mikey says again and falls forward, the fog enveloping them both as the wall forms behind him.

And Gerard knows that he’s trapped.


End file.
